Rookie Gardener

So I have tried to "put my money where my mouth is," inspired by Barbara Kingsolver, and started growing vegetables! (One of the Great British Traditions...) Our kind friends Simon and Andrea have two allotments just near our house, and they gave me some space in one of them to have a go. It has been so fun. I am growing tomatoes, peas, carrots, courgettes, squash, spinach, red peppers, herbs and lettuce. Well, so far they are all just babies, but I am quite optimistic.

Allotments are large spaces given over to strips of plots for growing stuff. They are owned and rented out by the local council, and if you rent one, it is a serious business - you have to keep it cultivated and tidy, and not be noisy and so on. Each person has their own shed complete with tea kettle and tools (I'm guessing), and they do take it quite seriously.



This is my little section. OK it looks a bit messy, but, they all do:

My courgettes, so far, my proteges.

My peas, small but perfect...

Ten Reasons To Take Up Vegetable Gardening:
1. Producing some food (even if only a bit), as well as just consuming, seems to be a good thing to do. Makes me feel I am doing my tiny bit.
2. It it is great excuse to be out of doors in the fresh air for a couple of hours.
3. It is a great way to be on my own for a while, in the peace and quiet, but not "inside my head," as it is physically busy and requires some thought but not too much. ie, it is the perfect escape!
4. It is exercise. I need it.
5. I can grow my favourite veggies.
6. It will save me money, a bit, when I actually harvest something.
7. Working with the earth to make it produce green shoots, leaves, flowers and fruit, being part of creation, working with the creator, is all just very satisfying.
8. Having young plants to tend is like having a hundred beautiful babies to look after, although thankfully different, as they don't cry, and they don't have names. But going to check on them, water them, remove insects and encroaching weeds, and look for their new leaves, does satisfy that nurturing impulse.
9. For me, it is a new thing to learn, a new if small challenge, which I enjoy.
10. It is great to take the children there and let them learn about growing things. They enjoy it too, so far!

I really can't recommend it enough...

Our Zimbabwe experience in a teeny tiny nutshell

Since I gathered a few photos of our time in Zimbabwe, for my talk on Saturday, I thought I'd post them here. There is loads not included. We loved Zimbabwe, and left reluctantly.

I went to Zimbabwe with Crosslinks, to teach Old Testament in a small Anglican theological college, called Bishop Gaul Theological College. It was the provincial college for the Province of the Church of Central Africa, ie for Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana. But, since it was such a large Province, students normally trained in little local colleges - and we only had twenty something students at the provincial one!

After one year, I married Dan, and we had a wedding celebration in Harare, in our friends' garden. Since I had become close to an older couple called Joe and Zilla Chiphudla, they demanded some bride price for me, so Dan paid them a goat for me! The goat then had twin kids - so they were really pleased!

Both our children were born in Zimbabwe. Babies are much loved there as you would expect. This is Pilani, one of our friends, meeting Abigail. She wasn't loving it...

This is when Alex was born - as you see, everyone comes to visit the newborn! These were some of the gorgeous ladies from our church, All Souls Mount Pleasant. Alex was only one day old! The visitors would always sing some hymns and say prayers aloud for the baby - it was a very special time, for me, and for the white farmer's wife in the bed next to mine!

A typical Jacaranda-lined suburb street of Harare. We lived right in Harare, a modern city (although it felt like it was still in the 1950s - but clean, wide streets, potholes fixed all the time, nothing like Kampala... at least, it was then; now, it is getting more like Kampala.)

This is me with Chad, the principal of the Anglican college. He is such a lovely man. He is now the Bishop of Harare, a job which came in very difficult circumstances, although things are better now.

Because I had previously lived in rural Zambia, I always longed to get out of the city into the other Zimbabwe. We made friends early on with a couple called Cuthbert and Shylet, and Shylet's mother lived in what were called "communal lands" about 45 minutes drive from Harare. (ie villages, in farming land, but, rough stony land, which the settlers allowed the blacks to live on - Zimbabwe's history is not all sunlight and roses...) This is me with Shylet's mother at her home.

In Zimbabwe, you usually did not use a person's name once they had children, you called them "Mama eldest child's name" - so we never learned this lady's own name!! Although we went there very often. I was called Mama Vimbai once Abigail was born - as her Shona name is Vimbainashe, shortened to Vimbai.

Dan meanwhile worked in an interdenominational college called Domboshawa Theological College. He was the academic dean there, and acting principal for a while.

We ended up leaving at very short notice, because a new bishop (before Chad) was appointed who was a political appointment, and found reasons to terminate all the contracts of white missionaries or clergy. Many Zimbabwean clergy also left the country at that time. It is a long story, but it involved Dan being accused of being in an assassination plot!! and getting phone calls from the War Veterans' Office accusing him of mistreating a war veteran (which would lead to many scary things if found to be true). Needless to say, neither of these things were true! It was all quite exciting, in its way. Alex was a newborn and Abby less than two at this point... In the end we found out we would be leaving, because a journalist rang us up and said, "I am hearing that you have been fie-ad - is it true?" It was the first we knew of it - but it came to pass.

God had already prepared a way for us and our young family though - and we were able to move to Redcliffe College within a few months, and start teaching there as Visiting Lecturers, while we looked for our next placement in Africa - which turned out to be, Uganda Christian University...

Silence

Yesterday I finished reading Silence, by Shusaku Endo. It is amazing. Written in the 1960s by a Catholic Japanese author, thought of by some as a Japanese Graham Greene. It is so thoughtful, and beautifully written, simply drawing pictures with just the sparest phrases and details. Just like in art, the negative spaces make it meaningful.

The story is of two Portuguese missionary priests who travel via Goa to Japan in the early 1600s, to support the Christians in Japan who are being severely persecuted. Several hundred thousand people had become Christians through the missionary work of priests back in the 1500s. For a while Christianity was accepted but then the shoguns began to turn against it because of its connection with the west; they saw it as an insidious attempt at colonialism. So Japanese Christians and missionaries were tortured,   and when they didn't apostasize, killed, often by crucifixion, or by being tied to stakes in the sea. Tens of thousands were killed, and many more apostasized, but it is thought that many lived on as hidden Christians.

Word had got about that an older Portguguese priest, Ferreira, had apostasized and had taken a Japanese name and even a wife, and was now writing tracts against Christianity. The main character of the book, Rodriguez, wanted to track down Ferreira, whom he had known and admired as his tutor in seminary, in order to make sure this tale wasn't true - because he was unable to accept it.

Eventually Rodriguez himself is captured and has to face the torturers himself. His thought processes, his questioning, and his final coming to terms with his fate and with God are fascinating to follow.

Among the threads which run through the book, one of the most interesting to me was the challenge frequently given by Rodriguez's antagonists, who claim that Christianity has failed to take hold in Japan because the Japanese had never understood God in the Christian sense, but that all along they had made their own version of the Christian God. The whole study of contextualization I find very interesting. What's wrong with a Japanese version of Christ? Rodriguez is convinced that there are true Christians here, since they are willing to endure tortures and die for their faith. In fact he sees many of them as better Christians than himself, and he their priest. This dynamic is so interesting, as is the way his understanding of himself grows through the book.

Another thread is the use of sounds and silence. The silence of the title is the apparent silence of God in the face of the persecution of those who love him. Rodriguez is constantly calling on God to break this silence, to no avail, but he hears God speak towards the end of the book,  - apparently commanding him to deny him. But if he apostasizes, will he not be rejected by God for ever, a shameful creature despised by all, like Ferreira? All through the book, sounds are described, the sounds of the sea especially, and of birds in the night, and of voices heard in the dark.

The main character sometimes narrates and sometimes is described. He is a sympathetic and very human figure. I was touched by how his relationship with Jesus is so real, and by how the image of the suffering Jesus helps him deeply throughout the events of the book. Many times he calls on memories of pictures of Christ's face, and describes it as a face he loves dearly. It comforts him tremendously. (He only sees a physical image of Christ's face once in the book, because all Christian artifacts have been destroyed or hidden away - and it is when he is being commanded to trample on it in apostasy.) This devotion, in the sense of deep love for a person, Jesus, is lacking in our sometimes rather dry wordy evangelical faith, I feel. I am going to try for more devotion.

I can't give away what happens, but it gives the reader a huge amount to think about. What does come out in the end so powerfully, is the unconditional love of God for all his people both weak and strong. It is a beautiful message coming from quite a shocking tale, a tough book to read, but incredibly worth it.

I am interested in this story of Christianity in Japan because my own great-grandparents and grandparents were missionaries with CMS in Japan, from the late 1800s to 1938. I have so far never managed to look into it very much, but this book has made me much more aware than before, that they were part of a very fascinating story.

Mukinge Girls Secondary School Zambia

When I was 25 I did what I had said for about ten years that I would do, answered the call that I believed had been put on my life, followed in my grandparents' footsteps (although in the wrong direction, south not east), and went to teach as a short termer in Zambia, at Mukinge Girls Secondary School.

I went for two years, feeling that anything shorter than that would be not giving enough, and would go in a flash. And I went thinking that it was a taste as well, to see if I should spend more of my life in Africa. 

I was with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, a wonderfully traditional, Bible-believing, old-fashioned mission, that made you feel safe as houses. (AEF has since merged with SIM.) Mukinge was a mission school, a boarding school for about 500 girls who were aged from 11 to 23 and who came from all over Zambia. The headmaster was Zambian - Mr Ntaimo (=Mr Time)- as was my head of department (RE), Boston Mwandobo, and most of the teachers apart from a couple of other short termers like me, and Doris an American maths teacher, whose house I shared. There was Felix Ngoma (= Mr Drum,) Grace Nosiku (= Mrs Night), Aaron Mbuuzi (Mr Goat), Nelson Chikafu who spoke perfect English, Mr Lungu, an incredibly short man called Goliath, Bridget Mutwale who was a lovely friend, and many more ... They were a fun, dynamic and ambitious group of teachers - lots of them went abroad for further education. I learned a lot from them, about the local culture, teaching, and theology.   

I loved Zambia so much, loved living in rural Africa (we were about three hours drive from the nearest town with shops that sold anything imported or refridgerated, and ten hours drive from a supermarket), I loved my Zambians colleagues and students, and as short termers we had so much fun - the whole two years were, almost completely, happy and wonderful. 

We didn't really have telephones (a couple, but the lines were broken down or stolen for the copper most of the time), no TVs (tho I bought one half way through my time), no laptops or email (it was 1992). Our evening entertainment consisted of potlucks, often themed, eg dressing up as our housemates, playing wild cheaty games of Uno, Murder Uno, Hearts, and Rook, or sitting around swapping tales of our lives, things like our favourite chocolate bars and crisps. We made up bizarre recipes with the limited selection of local food that was available to us: red bean crumble is the one I remember best, and avocado ice cream (actually a real recipe but, very strange.) We made our own bread but then a man started to come round selling loaves of bread on the front of his bike - he told us he made it in an ant hill by making a fire inside - so after that we ate "anthill bread". 

I walked an hour to church, through mud hut villages with scruffy thatch hanging down, the name of the headman scratched into thin pieces of wood nailed to the tree at the entrance, past tall anthills that towered up like Dr Seuss chimneys, through maize plantations, over a rickety wooden bridge that tilted to one side, under wooden beehives stuck into the branches of trees. It was real rural Africa, dusty, snakey, impoverished, and with little crowds of children who yelled as you went by and then followed you for a way giggling.  

I taught RE and English in the school, had my own class I took devotions with every morning, led an English Bible study at my church, became the school nurse (crazy!), learned to cook mealie meal (nshima), to eat it with my hands and most amazingly to like it. 

It was an unforgettable two years and I loved every minute.

Here are a few pictures I scanned in to make a power point recently:

"The Disciple," by Lucy Peppiatt - and my thoughts on sermons...

I am reading a book by my friend Lucy Peppiatt, called "The Disciple". It is a really good book about being a Christian, written in a chatty, kind of flowing way, which carries you along. There are loads of good and often funny stories about incidents in people's lives, including Lucy's own family - and since I know them a little bit, it is fun getting those inside glimpses.

She talks about having what are traditionally called "spiritual disciplines" in your life, but she prefers the term holy habits, and she says that there is no point whatsoever doing them if it is out of a sense of duty, or to win points - but rather, if you have met and loved Jesus, you'll want to know him more, and these are the ways... She isn't saying the holy habits are dispensable, rather that, you can only really do them if you have the will and yes, a bit of willpower, but, then doing them will bring so much reward, so once you start it will become easier and more exciting. And you'll see transformation in your life. You do what you can, and then the Spirit of God will do ALL that He can - and there will definitely be results!

At least, this is what I am getting out of it... So far...

There is a section on the gift that God's Word is to us, and how we receive it in various ways including hearing preaching. She writes a bit here about how in many of the less traditional churches, there is an inclination towards abandoning the preaching - because it has come to be seen as irrelevant and boring in our entertainment age. She bewails this as preaching is still so important. But, there is a problem when preaching does become dull and long and out of touch. And I must admit, I have listened to so many dull, deadly sermons, I had begun to despair of the sermon slot myself. Until we started going to our church, St Andrews in Churchdown. The vicar there, Jonathan Perkin, is so gifted at preaching - I actually, honestly look forward to his sermons every week. Which is a miracle. He manages to be very easy to listen to, profound, and encouraging, week after week. (I also enjoy the curate's sermons too, - they are enjoyable and have humour in them.)

Of course, for those of you who know Dan, you'll know that his sermons are always entertaining and far-reaching, quite out of the box, and definitely teach you things. So I never despaired of his...

So, Lucy includes this brilliant quote from Martin Luther in her book, which I have to reproduce because it made me laugh and it is so true:

"Cursed be every preacher who aims at lofty topics in the church, looking for his own glory and selfishly desiring to please one individual or another. When I preach here I adapt myself to the circumstances of the common people. I don't look at the doctors and masters, of whom scarcely forty are present, but at the hundred or the thousand young people and children. It's to them that I preach, to them that I devote myself, for they too need to understand. If the others don't want to listen, they can leave... we preach in public for the sake of plain people. Christ could have taught in a profound way, but He wished to deliver His message with the utmost simplicity in order that the common people might understand. Good God, there are sixteen-year-old girls, women, and farmers in the church, and they don't understand lofty matters."     Luther's Works, quoted in Lucy Peppiatt, The Disciple: on becoming truly human, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012) p 39.

OK, so maybe things have changed a little bit now... but Luther's point stands! Only a few weeks ago I sat in another evangelical church with my children and their little cousins filling the row in front of us, while the preacher spoke seriously and deeply for thirty minutes, without one reference to their presence nor one sentence they could understand. It was almost beyond belief.

Preachers, please don't be boring and irrelevant! And if you have heard a lot of dull preaching, don't worry, there are still great preachers out there, and when you hear one, it is like water falling on dry thirsty ground.

Do I Look Like a Morning Person?

This was written on a mug I was given a cup of tea in today and it made me laugh. I am not...

Finding it hard to get up in the mornings, has plagued me all my life, whether I go to bed early or late, whether the day ahead is going to be fun or not - it is just a thing I have.

But in the days when I am also feeling low, there is an added emotional or psychological component. I loved Ann Voskamp on this, because, even though she is amazingly spiritual and able to encourage others, she writes honestly about still feeling depressed sometimes (at least, when she was writing the book), and about the daily struggle of having to push back the wave of darkness every single morning before you can even get out of bed.

I have that sometimes. I wake up, and as well as feeling fuzzy and groggy and leaden-limbed, there is also a layer of dark cloud that wants to stay over me in the same way my duvet does. Even if the day ahead holds fun things and people, not to mention my own husband and children, (and dog!), there is a creeping little sadness that lurks beyond, wanting to slide over it all.

It requires a great mental effort to shrug that off, to reject it, and to wake up to the day.

So a short while ago, I prayed that God would give me something to help me first thing in the morning.

And Bible verses have been coming to me, some of them ones I haven't read for ages and ages.

First one was: "He is my strength and my shield." This was just what I needed! Strength to get up and get going, and a shield to guard me from whatever the day might throw at me. It was perfect.

Another one was a Stuart Townend song from the concert we went to: Everlasting Love

Another one was: "In all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." More than conquerors. That was a promise and encouragement that helped me through that busy day.

There are probably loads more in there, in the armoury - these ones have helped me already.